📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

Day 8 - Calendar

Still reading 夜カフェ.
Today I read the rest of chapter 11 as well as 4 pages into chapter 12. At the moment it looks like I can finish the book on Sunday and start the new week with a new book. I’m looking forward to it.
Also I read a news article on my Nintendo Switch in Japanese. While I didn’t understood it fully (I was too lazy to look up the unknown kanji), I was able to get the gist of it.
Also I noticed that I’m slowly becoming better at reading katakana.

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Day 6 ご一報 :tv:

I read a good chunk of よつばと today, I’m halfway through the first book. It really does feel good when reading is not a total struggle.

:pleading_face::point_right: :point_left:

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Day 8 :heavy_check_mark: :candy:

Candy and Cigarettes ~37 pages

As promised to myself, I took a break from 三毛猫ホームズの推理 today and read a manga instead. I discovered Candy and Cigarettes by accident when I was idly browsing Bookwalker’s freebies some weeks ago, and so far I’m liking it a lot. There’s something about an honest upstanding citizen turning bad in his old age that appeals to me. Ditto for a cute and innocent looking under-age assassin. Add to that a shady secret organization run from a second hand bookshop, and there’s really not much more I need in a story to be happy. It’s full of fun satisfying action but what mostly keeps my interest is the delicate dynamics in the relationship of the two protagonists.
Look at the cute little angel nodding off after a tiring day of shooting down corrupt politicians after school .

image

Some vocab

うまい話 – offer that’s too good to be true, likely scam
返り血 - spurt of blood that splashes you when you hurt/kill someone
殺人鬼 - bloodthirsty killer
寄生虫 - parasite
裏カジノ - unlicensed casino
おびき出す - to lure out
するい - cunning, sneaky
人の道 - moral way of life, correct path
殺戮 - slaughter, massacre

(I also read a little of 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん for the IBC)

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Just 6 pages for かがみの孤城 🪞 Week 20 today.

Nice word: 羽目 - awkward situation

Sounds interesting! Added it to the list :slightly_smiling_face:

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Day 8 / Calendar

Just finished reading this week’s beginner book club part. Around 50 minutes before the day rolls over in my timezone. It actually went quite well I think, barely had to pull out ichi.moe to break down sentences and didn’t need to use deepl to understand them, which was nice.

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Summary post :bookmark:

April 8th :seedling:

・薬屋のひとりごと (10% → 12%)

Finished chapter five. Thoughts/note to self: Maomao really didn’t want to attract attention but ended up getting promoted from low-ranking servant to the princess’s (?) maid :eyes: Also was a bit surprised about this Jinshi person, seems like he could’ve been a model/idol with his pretty looks. Mysterious word of the day: (しょう)(ふく), uniform of some sort??

Now (tomorrow) I can browse the week 2 thread, completely forgot to earlier today. Maybe people already talked about the part with the gates that I thought was confusing yesterday.

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April 8th!

I was hoping to do a lot of reading tonight, but its been a bit of a tough day and I’m a bit unwell so I didn’t.
I read the next chapter of Teasing Master Takagi-san though, which means I’ve finished Volume 5 :slight_smile:
Finishing a volume always feels like an achievement.

(Home Post)

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I read nine pages today and it is getting easier. I’ll start the fourth book in the set tomorrow.

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April 8
お疲れ! We made it to Friday!

I read 4 of the level-one graded readers just now because I’m not sure when I’ll have time later. I got my friend hooked on Yuri on Ice, so we’ll be watching more of it later tonight. The readers were good! All food-related lol. I’m getting better at recognizing cooking-related words.

Someone in one of my discords posted a link to a short story on a site called Novel Updates. It’s kinda like AO3 where there’s filters and tags to sort info. One of the tags is works that were originally published somewhere else, like syosetsu. Which I find useful because it means I can try to look up the work on Syosetu and read it in Japanese!

Progress on Tadoku graded readers
44 / 44 level-zeros
4 / 12 level-ones
x /10 level-twos
x / 18 level-threes

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Day 8?

Started reading なぜ?どうして?かがくのお話1年生: 0% → 22%.
Read about yawning, forhead bumps and hematomas, stages of teeth growth, why we get a headache when eating cold stuff, why farts smell bad. There’re not many kanjis, but the text contains spaces, so it’s not so much a hiragana hell.
I’m trying out a new word processing routine: I add new words to a list on jisho when I look them up, and the export them as csv and append to my master list. Still not inputting them into SRS, as the idea of having to learn words with an SRS doesn’t appeal to me.

There was one simple sentence I’m not sure I understood, so I’d be grateful if anyone can clarify this for me. For context, the text is talking about wisdom teeth:

これは、生えてくる 人と 生えない 人が います。

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Oh no! Take care of yourself; I really hope you feel better soon.

Same goes for you. This club is starting to feel like a sickness magnet :face_with_thermometer:. お大事に!


Summary post

Rather big Summer Pockets day! I did indeed finish Ao’s route quickly; I’ve been adding in a little extra reading at night and was less than 1000 characters away. It managed to really hit me at the end, so I have to say despite the grevances I’ve alluded to, I quite liked it.

Learning by reading like this, there’s really no way it can be approached but holistically, but do you all ever feel like you’re bouncing between certain parts of the language as what’s jumping out at you at the moment? In the past I mentioned struggles with onomatopoeia… recently it feels like it’s all compound verb time. I don’t necessarily mean I’m having trouble with them, they vary with a lot being very intuitive and some less so. I’m just really encountering a staggering amount of them recently to contend with in Anki and if my Japanese studies were characterized by anything right now, it’s sorting those out.

So now that I’m back choosing what I do each day, I can choose some of the silly side events I mentioned, and one was dealing with a beehive in an inconvenient spot. I got incredibly confused by the line “ハチの巣をハチの巣にしてくれませんか?” until I read on and the character said it was a 比喩 (metaphor/simile/etc) and some searching has taught me, if I read the Japanese answer correctly, that ハチの巣状態 and similar phrasings refer to how a beehive is full of holes. Interesting.

I’ve decided it’s time for Umi’s route. She’s the one non-romantic full route; a young girl who is the protagonist’s (IIRC) unspecified relative. Her scenes have always amused me and it’ll be nice to see what this game goes for when it’s not romance.

Following her also led me down a rabbit hole to an entire minigame tucked away behind inconspicuous side choices. Turns out, you can unlock a whole monster collecting and battling game, which gives you something to do each day when you’re not hanging out with someone as an alternative to the many side scenes. This game is loaded with optional content. It’s incredibly simplistic but I have to admit it looks addictive all the same. I spent a little too much time today acquiring bugs and fish and battling the low ranked opponents… which were mostly turtles, dogs, cats, anything but humans.

That map is kind of adorable. I only read about 5000 characters today, but a lot of that ended up being card game tutorial stuff, which got a little dense and used a weird font, so I don’t feel too bad.

I have too much to say today! Well to conclude, my favorite new word is 雄姿 (ゆうし), which intuitively means something along the lines of “magnificent appearance.” There’s a lot of meaning packed into that word.

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It’s saying that there are people who “grow” wisdom teeth and people who don’t. I’m lucky enough to be the latter :smile:

Edit: See Nicole explaining this better below, since I kinda skimmed over transitivity.

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Maybe it’s a bit clearer to express this in an intransitive way (as 生える is intransitive after all)?

So I think that it actually is an abbreviation of
(歯が) 生えてくる 人 - people for whom (the wisdom teeth) grow
(歯が) 生えない 人 - people for whom (the wisdom teeth) don’t grow
and now the intransitive nature of the modifying verb should become a bit clearer.

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Yeah you’re totally right; this was a case of being like “yeah I see what this is saying” and being a bit sloppy writing out the idea as it came to me – should have probably slowed down.

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In case the ()えてくる part is confusing, it’s basically using the くる part to like… relate the verb to the person it’s happening to more closely? てくる and ていく work like that sometimes, to show the metaphorical direction of the verb, if that makes sense. It’s kind of an abstract concept that I feel like you mostly just get a sense for! But yeah it’s basically like ()えて is happening towards the person whose wisdom teeth are growing, which makes sense since your teeth are pretty directly connected to you :joy:

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Summary Post

April 8
Final Fantasy VII

Vocabulary
  • 模型 = もけい model, maquette.
  • 野望 = やぼう ambition, aspiration.
  • 拡散 = かくさん scattering, diffusion.
  • 稼働 = かどう operation (of machine), operating, running.
  • 長命 = ちょうめい long life.
  • 信頼 = しんらい trust, reliance.
  • 相違 = そうい difference, discrepancy, variation.
  • 値上げ = ねあげ price increase, price hike.
  • 支障 = ししょう hindrance, obstacle.
  • 再開 = さいかい reopening, resumption.
  • 招く = まねく multiple meanings, but today context was “to cause, to bring on oneself, to result in”.
  • 劣る = おとる to be inferior to, to be less good at, to fall behind.
  • 繁殖 = はんしょく breed, multiply.
  • 再建 = さいけん rebuilding, reconstruction.

Hmm I can’t really think of a specific example but it kinda sounds familiar. I think I’ve also struggled at times with compound verbs. There are times when I go into one of these phases of “wow I know absolutely nothing of this language” and I feel like a complete beginner again in so many aspects, nothing seems to click. But then I keep going and I come out of it like it’s nothing. Currently I’m having one of those phases where I feel I’m improving, but it goes back and forth constantly so I’m learning to enjoy both phases, weird as it sounds. Mostly because I’m starting to understand that bad phases are as important as good ones, if not more.

I swear learning a language feels to me like 5 steps forward 3 steps backward. I’ll go back to failing to recognise the easiest words and grammar soon enough, just wait :joy: .

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Yeah I think it’s just a mental thing but I’m very good at overthinking it. Can’t just let things happen, gotta be overly monitoring them cause that’s what my mind will do. And I think I’m just picking up on random patterns that happen to stand out, but right now it’s “wow every other sentence has a new compound verb.”

Yeah this seems to be common. I think the only times I can noticeably feel progress is after coming off a period of “what am I even doing, I know nothing” feelings that I can’t shake off for a bit.

Right now I’m in the middle zone: not really feeling like I’ve noticeably improved in a bit (maybe in speed/stamina a bit, hopefully, but…), but not feeling like I’m hitting a wall either. Just feeling the slow grind of vocab accumulation a little too hard. I’m hoping to soon feel like I’ve gathered enough that the unfamiliar words are a little more spread out, but I seem to be right in the muck of the thousands of “not super common but not weird enough to be rare” zone, where you just have to learn and learn but it’s only going to feel like you’ve truly done anything as a collective thing far in the future. I understand it but it’s not the greatest :melting_face:

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Day 7

Today I finished section 2, chapter 1 in 透明カメレオン!

The chapter felt so quick. Which is great, because I am very sleepy :yawning_face: Rest now, read more later!!

:cherry_blossom::house_with_garden: My Home Post :house_with_garden::cherry_blossom:

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Summary Post

Day 8: April 8th
What did I read?: ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 Vol 2
How much did I read?: 4 pages
How long did it take me?: 18 min

I had every intention of reading more of this today, but I’m suddenly very exhausted and about to fall asleep so I think I’ll stop with just this for now :sleepy: Pleasantly surprised by my reading speed, though, considering it’s not a manga.

Just a couple words today
  • 正々堂々 (せいせいどうどう) - fair and square; open and aboveboard​
  • すりつぶす - to mash; to grind; to pulverize; to pulverise; to deface
  • はげむ - to strive; to endeavour; to endeavor; to make an effort; to be zealous
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April 8 :cherry_blossom: Home Post

You guessed it, more VLR today! Most of my time was spent on that same ending (which still isn’t over, it’s so much omg) but I finished off another little route in the meantime. Progress is being made :+1:

VLR stuff

Yeah so this has been the longest route of my life :joy: And it’s still to be continued!! Though it’s different; it’s not like locked, I just need more information in my own brain? Idk we shall see :eyes: But this route is rough, the body count is absolutely brutal. It’s very much submarine ending vibes where I’m like “wait everyone’s dead, who killed them” :joy: クォーク’s on the move though :eyes: at least in theory, I guess it could be someone else but I can’t possibly know at this point, it’s wild

I always feel so bad betraying people :sweat_smile: like I literally have to in order to complete the game, but!! I feel bad!! :joy: I had to betray ルナ and she was so hurt, it was so sad, I still think she’s a robot but I still feel bad lmao(ひと)よし through and through :man_shrugging:

Ohhhh a big moment was when シグマ suddenly had radical 6 syptoms, that was wild, I definitely see how it messes people up. Just… existing in that speed? Yikes

Prediction-wise, I really don’t know what to do :joy: like… I don’t think ディオ is ゼロ, he very much has his own stuff going on that is at least partially in opposition to ゼロ’s things. Otherwise… oof. I’m still very suspicious of クォーク but I’m not sure if I think he’s ゼロ really? Something’s up with him for sure, but it’s hard to imagine he’s ゼロ, but who knows! I don’t think I can put anything past Zero Escape :joy:

Lmao yeah that tracks, I definitely encountered that in 999, mostly one character in particular liked to say it (not really spoilers but :man_shrugging:) it was 一宮(いちみや) so yeah, that checks out :joy:

Ooooh yes I’ve run into that general metaphor before, absolutely do not remember where but I just remember it being the equivalent of like calling something swiss cheese :joy:

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